Neighborhoods around Main and University intersection project getting traffic calming devices

Tuesday

Mar 25, 2014 at 1:00 AM

Nick Vlahos Journal Star reporter @vlahosnick

PEORIA — Reconstruction of the intersection of Main and University streets is on a fast track.

Some residents of the nearby Uplands neighborhood would like to slow some side effects.

They made their feelings known Monday night at Bradley University during another in a series of public meetings about the Main-University project, which accelerates next week.

“The Uplands and the West Bluff neighborhoods are some of the areas you want to replicate around the city of Peoria as far as attracting young families to move in, live and walk in the area and have places to send their kids,” Uplands resident Hank Edley said following the forum at Westlake Hall.

“If there’s an increase in traffic in my neighborhood, it’s going to degrade that. So I’m concerned about it.”

Edley lives near Columbia Terrace and Elmwood Avenue, in the neighborhood northwest of the Main-University intersection. When it was closed recently for water-main repairs, the result of a breach last year, traffic in Edley’s area during rush hours increased by a factor of four or five, he said.

Drivers were leaving University Street, which runs north and south, and using east-west Columbia Terrace to get to Uplands north-south streets, according to Edley. City Engineer Scott Reeise sympathizes.

“The folks are concerned about what it does to their neighborhood, and that’s not our goal, to ruin the neighborhood,” Reeise said. “It’s figuring out what else can be done there.”

That might include traffic calming devices or additional signs on Columbia, according to Reeise. Already planned for Uplands north-south streets are traffic humps 4 inches high and flat for 6 feet.

Such humps are under construction on Elmwood Avenue and North Parkside Drive and should be completed by the end of the week, Reeise said. Others are planned for Institute Place and Maplewood and Glenwood avenues.

Construction is to commence Tuesday on traffic humps on Moss Avenue and on Columbia Terrace east of University. Moss will be closed to through traffic between Western Avenue and MacArthur Highway. Columbia will be closed from University to Sheridan Road.

The plan is for those thoroughfares to be open by Monday, Reeise said. At about 7 a.m. that day, the Main-University junction will close for approximately six weeks. What usually is a two- or three-year process is being squeezed into about eight months, Reeise said.

When construction is finished, the intersection is to feature wider sidewalks, fewer traffic lanes and sidewall benches where BU students and others can sit.

The goal is to promote pedestrians and to reduce vehicular traffic on southbound University by 30 percent to 35 percent, Reeise said. That probably would allay the fears of Edley and his fellow Uplanders, along with others who might have difficulty envisioning the finished product.

“It’s not going to be that same intersection. It’s going to be a completely different intersection,” area resident Jason Breede said. “The idea is to be a destination. You don’t speed through a destination.”

Nick Vlahos can be reached at 686-3285 or nvlahos@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @VlahosNick.